Master VEG Program Speakers

Don retired in 1995 after a career as a chemical engineer. Following years as an off and on again vegetarian, he read John Robbins' book, Diet For A New America, in 1992 and quickly transitioned to a vegan diet. For 10 years, 1998-2008, Don was an officer in the EarthSave Portland Vancouver Chapter and later in Northwest VEG. His responsibilities included choosing speakers for local vegetarian potlucks. Related to this responsibility was a need for self studies on health and nutrition, environmental impacts from animal food production, and conditions for farmed animals. He was on the original team that helped design the Master Vegetarian Program in 2006 and became a speaker for the Program focusing on food corporations, genetically modified foods, the US farm bill, and fair trade. He continues to study these ever changing four issues, upgrading his talk for each MVP series.

Kathy Hessler is a clinical professor of law and director of the only animal law clinic in the country. She is the first faculty member hired to teach animal law full time in a law school. She received her LL.M. from Georgetown University Law Center and graduated with a J.D. from the Marshall-Wythe School of Law at the College of William and Mary. Prior to teaching at Lewis & Clark, Professor Hessler taught in clinical programs at Case Western Reserve University Law School, Cornell Law School, the University of Dayton Law School, the Capital University School of Law, and Georgetown University Law Center. She has been an animal activist and vegan since the late 1980's. She has been an advisor to the journal Animal Law since 1998, she coaches the animal moot court teams, and has been teaching Animal Law directly for 8 years and as a part of nonviolence courses beginning in 1989. She was a board member with ALDF and helped found the Animal Law Committee of the Cuyahoga County Bar. She is the chair and a founder of the Animal Law Section of the American Association of Law Schools. She co-authored the amicus brief submitted in the U.S. v. Stevens case, on behalf of 45 law professors who teach animal law. She has written law review articles and is writing two books on animal law. Professor Hessler lectures widely on animal law and animal law education issues and has spoken at Harvard and Yale as well as over a dozen other law schools in the US and in Canada and Japan.

Dr. Ramona Ilea is an assistant professor of philosophy at Pacific University, Oregon. She teaches a semester-long "Animal Ethics" class, as well as classes on biomedical ethics, environmental ethics, and theoretical ethics. She has over twenty-five conference presentations as well as a number of publications, including "Intensive Livestock Farming: Global Trends, Increased Environmental Concerns, and Ethical Solutions" in the Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics and "Nussbaum's Capabilities Approach and Non-Human Animals: Theory and Public Policy" in the Journal of Social Philosophy. Her teaching and her research are highly connected; when she teaches, she aims to show students that studying philosophy is not just intellectually stimulating but also a powerful tool that can enable us to understand, analyze, and change the world.